Slack is a productivity and chat platform for team communication and collaboration. To get started, you’ll need to create a team (or join an existing one), then invite users to chat with. Once your chat is set up, you can use channels to communicate publicly and direct messages for private exchanges. While chatting you can use special formatting, add emoji/reactions, track mentions, share files, and more.

Create a channel. Click “+” next to “Channel” in the left sidebar. From here you can set a name, invite users, and choose whether it will be public (viewable/joinable by anyone on the team) or private (invite-only).

To access the sidebar on mobile, tap the team name in the upper left corner.

Send teammates direct messages. Click the “+” icon next to “Direct Messages”. Enter a teammate’s name and a direct message channel will be created in the left sidebar for private communication between you and that user.

Adjust channel notifications. Click the Gear icon in the upper right and select “Notification Preferences”. From here you can adjust what actions (such as any message or mentions-only) will send you a notification on any platform associated with your account.

You can set custom notifications for mentions of specific words.

These can be accessed from the settings menu on mobile.

You can temporarily disable notifications by pressing the Bell icon in the upper left (upper right on mobile)

Modify messages. Click the three dot icon displayed on the right of a message when you hover the cursor over it. This will bring up a menu to edit, delete, mark unread, pin, or set a reminder for that message.

Tap and hold a message on mobile to bring up the full list of modifying options.

Pinning a message will place it at the top of a channel and display it as you scroll. Use this for important announcements.

You can select a period from 20 minutes to 1 week before the reminder takes place.

Star messages to flag them as important. Click the Star icon that appears next to the timestamp when hovering the cursor over the messages. This will add it to a list of saved messages that can be check later by clicking the Star icon in the upper right.

On mobile, tap a message to select it, then tap the star that appears at the top of the screen. You can check your starred message by tapping the team name and selecting “Starred” from the dropdown menu in the upper left.

Mention a user in chat. Type “@” followed by the username of the person you want to mention. They will receive a slack notification that they have been mentioned in a chat.

For example: “@user: slack message”.

You can also use mentions to address an entire channel or team (@channel, @team).

You can check messages in which you’ve been mentioned by clicking the “@” icon in the upper right corner. On mobile, this is accessed by tapping the team name and selecting “Mentions” from the dropdown menu in the upper left.

Add reactions to messages. Click the smiley icon when hovering over a message to add an emoji reaction that will display directly below the message. These can be used for something like votes, or just for fun.

Reactions can also be added to messages from the modify message menu. On mobile this is the only way to add them.

Integrate with other software platforms. If you have Admin access to your team, you can go to slack.com/integrations and choose from a list of app extensions to include in your Slack for direct interaction.[3]

Various productivity services like Google Drive, Trello, or Dropbox have well maintained Slack extensions.

You can also integrate third party bots to serve more specific purposes than the included slackbot.

Your status will adjust on its own when you are away from your keyboard for too long, but you can also toggle between active/away status manually by clicking the dot next to your name (or from the settings menu on mobile).[4]

1. Go to https://www.slack.com.
2. Sign in or create a team.
3. Click the + next to "Channels" to create a channel.
4. Type into the bottom bar and press Enter to chat.
5. Click + next to the bottom bar to send files and photos.
6. Click + next to "DIRECT MESSAGES" to send a message.
7. Click the gear to adjust preferences.
8. Click your team name to sign into another team.
9. Click the star on a message to mark it "Important."